According to Your Heart's Desire

A quote from Catherine McAuley:

Mortify in me , dear Jesus, all that is displeasing to Thee and make me according to Your own heart's desire. Amen.

I have been attending a class in my sabbatical program where we are working on what we were expected to do in our earlier years, those expectations where we were to work in a virtue and perfect it. If fact when we talk about becoming perfect we often think that it means to be without any error or sin. When we look at "being perfect as God is perfect" it is a hard act to even try to follow. It can be so discouraging since we fall, time and time again.

A different interpretation of this is to look at the whole of those passages, not just the part that is often read in liturgy. What one sees is that God is asking for compassion and love, not perfection! It was a new revelation for me. It also helped me to look at my outer life of trying to be perfect and at my spiritual life which is a personal relationship with a God who loves me just as I am.

Now today's quote says to me that are asking Jesus to make us aware of our weaknesses and to shape us according to his desires, which is with mercy and love.

So let us look at our lives to see where we are listening to God's desire for us and what is our ego or pride trying to make us better than others. It's an interesting slant on perfection and much easier to allow God to form us in mercy than to be without error.

www.sistersofmercy.org